But — surprise! — an updated Brookings Institution study found the inland metropolitan areas of California beat out the upscale coastal cities in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley for overall economic growth in 2013-14.

What most Californians hear and read in the media is the cities of San Francisco and San Jose are leading the jobs recovery in California, with the inland areas still mired in recession.  And indeed those two cities are doing well.

But when measured at the level of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Fresno, Sacramento and Riverside were ranked higher in combined positive change in employment and Gross Domestic Product growth per person for 2013-2014.

The Brookings Institution’s Metro Monitor survey analyzes to what degree the world’s 300 largest metropolitan economies have recovered to 2007 levels of income and employment.  Eight California cities were ranked in the survey.

Fresno leads the pack

Fresno was the highest-ranked California metro area in 2013-14, with a rank of 49, mainly due to 4.5 percent employment growth. Fresno actually had a negative 0.9 percent growth in GDP.

Next came the San Jose metro area, ranked 72, with a tiny 0.2 percent growth in GDP, but a 3.5 percent jump in employment.

Third came the Riverside metro area, ranked 103, with 0.2 percent GDP growth and 2.8 percent employment growth.

Fourth was Sacramento, ranked 122, attributable to a 1.1 percent increase in GDP and 2.0 percent boost in jobs.

Surprisingly, the San Francisco metro area came in fifth in California and 125th in the world.  Another surprise was that San Francisco had a 0.5 percent decline in GDP, coupled with a 2.6 percent increase in jobs. So high-tech job growth in the San Francisco area doesn’t tell the whole story.

Rounding out the bottom three metro areas in California were San Diego at 142, Los Angeles at 148 and Bakersfield at 178.

San Jose and San Francisco, however, still had the highest GDP per capita by a large margin over the other California areas.

Again surprisingly, California’s eight metro areas averaged a .325 percent decline in per capita GDP in 2013-14, but a 2.76 percent increase in jobs.

It needs to be pointed out that the above numbers only partly reflect the record drought, which worsened in late 2014 and likely will affect the numbers for the inland agricultural areas of California such as Fresno and Bakersfield.

CA Leaps over Brazil in GDP 

On Jan. 15, Bloomberg reported California’s total GDP surpassed Brazil to become the eighth-ranked in the world if our state were a country.  In 2013, California surpassed Russia and Italy.

Gov. Jerry Brown was quick to attribute this higher ranking to the diversity of California’s economy and his financial policies.

However, yet another surprise is that California’s surpassing of Brazil in GDP was mainly because of the decline of Brazil’s economy, much as Italy’s and Russia’s GDP also declined from 2012 to 2013 (see table below).

And California may have the eighth largest GDP in the world, but on a per capita basis, it ranks 18th among 50 states, below Illinois and above Nebraska.

Change in GDP 2012-2013 (in trillions – unadjusted for inflation)

Note: The above numbers reflect nominal, not real, GDP. California’s real GDP increase for 2013 was 2.0 percent. The main difference between nominal and real values is that real values are adjusted for inflation, while nominal values are not. As a result, nominal GDP will often appear higher than real GDP. Nominal vs. Real GDP, and the GDP Deflator — Investopedia.

“I’m a student of history, and I love to go back and read a particularly great book like Kissinger’s book about diplomacy where you think about the 18th, 19th centuries and the balance of power and how difficult it was for countries to advance their interests and years and years of wars. And we sometimes say to ourselves, boy, aren’t we lucky. Well, folks, ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year.”

What an elitist. He longs for a world when the Elite, like him, “process” everything, and the rest of us are left out. He continued about the Internet:

“It makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest, and that is complicated by a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism that is prepared to employ violent means to impose on other people a way of thinking and a way of living that is completely contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for. So we need to keep in mind what our goals are and how complicated this world is that we’re operating in.”

Actually, the Internet makes it easier for people to “find the common interest.” Just 20 years ago, it was difficult to find libertarian publications. Now it’s easy to find such sites as LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com. Of course, those sites relentlessly criticize him. So I can see why he doesn’t like it and wants to go back to the days of the Elite controlling information.

As to “a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism,” there’s been a lot of that over the ages. Nothing new. But except for North Korea, we no longer have the secular regimes that murdered tens of millions of people in the last century, especially religious people. Even Castro’s Cuba is pretty tame now. That’s largely due to the communications revolution. It’s a lot harder to perpetrate an Auschwitz or a Gulag today because people would write about it on the Internet, and Google Maps would provide satellite pictures.

Elitists like Kerry don’t like losing control. Well, they lost control — and it’s gone for good.

By John Seiler

I noted earlier that anti-government protests have erupted in Brazil against their crummy government. Now the protests are spreading. The latest, as reported in the New YorkTimes:

“More than a million protesters marched in the streets late Thursday, according to Brazilian news reports, in the biggest demonstrations yet, and President Dilma Rousseff on Friday called an emergency meeting of her top Cabinet members.”

The Brazilian Obama should resign.

“The mass protests thundering across Brazil have swept up an impassioned array of grievances — costly stadiums, corrupt politicians, high taxes and shoddy schools — and spread to more than 100 cities on Thursday night, the most to date, with increasing ferocity.”

Sounds like America today, especially California.

“All of a sudden, a country that was once viewed as a stellar example of a rising, democratic power finds itself upended by an amorphous, leaderless popular uprising with one unifying theme: an angry, and sometimes violent, rejection of politics as usual.

“Much like the Occupy movement in the United States, the anticorruption protests that shook India in recent years, the demonstrations over the cost of living in Israel or the fury in European nations like Greece, the demonstrators in Brazil are fed up with traditional political structures, challenging the governing party and the opposition alike. And their demands are so diffuse that they have left Brazil’s leaders confounded as to how to satisfy them.”

Actually, a better example than the Occupy movement would the the Tea Party, which the Times doesn’t even mention at all. The Tea Party, contrary to some myths of it being started by the billionaire Koch Bros., in fact was a spontaneous uprising sparked by Ron Paul’s December 2007 “Money Bomb” on the Internet. Paul even called it a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party. Thousands of local groups took it from there. (And in fact, Paul and the Kochs are opposing factions in the libertarian movement.)

Moroever, like the Brazilians, and unlike the Occupy movement, the Tea Partiers oppose the sky high taxes that are bleeding us dry to pad the pockets of lazy government workers and Crony Capitalists who can manipulate the system.

Also, as we have learned the past two months, it was the Tea Partiers, not the Occupy movement, who were the targets of the Stasi-level attacks by the wicked IRS under Obama, which ensured his rigged re-election. Not that Romney would have been better. But opposition to Obama, led by the Tea Partiers, never was allowed to get off the ground because the IRS mercilessly harassed them.

As with my previous post on Brazil, I’m going to end with a YouTube of the great Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66.

And here’s a snappy salute to Brazilians. Let’s hope they lead us all in revolt against repressive governments.

By John Seiler

Heroic! I’m inspired by the people of Brazil, who are sick and tired their socialist government. AP reports:

“SAO PAULO (AP) — Tens of thousands of Brazilians again flooded the streets of the country’s biggest city to raise a collective cry against a longstanding lament – people are weighed down by high taxes and high prices but get low-quality public services and a system of government infected with corruption.”

Sounds just like California. They even have our great beaches and weather.

“That was the repeated message Tuesday night in Sao Paulo, where upward of 50,000 people massed in front of the city’s main cathedral. While mostly peaceful, the demonstration followed the rhythm of protests that drew 240,000 people across Brazil the previous night, with small bands of radicals splitting off to fight with police and break into stores.”

OK, breaking into stores is bad. The enemy is the socialist government, not private businesses that somehow have managed to survive despite the high taxation, preposterous regulations and government corruption.

“Mass protests have been mushrooming across Brazil since demonstrations called last week by a group angry over the high cost of a woeful public transport system and a recent 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares in Sao Paulo, Rio and elsewhere….

“President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship, hailed the protests for raising questions and strengthening Brazil’s democracy. “Brazil today woke up stronger,” she said in a statement.

“Yet Rousseff offered no actions that her government might take to address complaints, even though her administration is a prime target of demonstrators’ frustrations.”

Typical politician. She tries to ride the wave of discontent that her own socialist policies caused. I wish the Brazilians well. Maybe they can show us Californians how to fight an out-of-touch autocracy.

Meanwhile, here’s a YouTube of the great Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66:

By Chris Reed

In much of Europe and in California, greens wield such power in politics and the media that the debate over whether a nation or state should pursue hydraulic fracturing of energy reserves seems like a fight over a new and unproven process. But in the rest of the world, there’s an acceptance that times have changed. that fracking’s nothing new, and that fossil fuels are still the big dog in town. Read this New York Times article from April 24. to get a sense of the real-world view of fracking and other energy developments. It is headlined “By 2023, a Changed World in Energy” and cites the “miraculous change” in the U.S. energy outlook because of fracking.

Yet in California, the real world does not intrude. And so the Ventura County Star, which offered the first coverage of measures blocking fracking being approved by a legislative committee, never offered this minor detail: The Obama administration sees fracking as just another heavy industry. Isn’t that, yunno, news? Duh!

Fracking sanity chapter No. 8: Mexico

This media sloth and ineptitude is why that every morning for a week I’ve been blogging about the nations around the world that think it’s a good thing to have cheap energy and have embraced fracking. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada and Argentina. Now it’s the turn of our neighbor to the south, which has the fourth largest shale reserves in the world, according to the U.S. government.

What’s my point? The fracking/brown energy revolution is coming, regardless of what greens in the Golden State and Europe want, and that California can either join in the party or get left behind.

This is from an April 21 Inter Press Service report that lays out the determination of PEMEX, the government-owned oil giant, and Mexican leaders to get on the fracking bandwagon:

“Since 2011, PEMEX has drilled at least six wells for shale gas in the northern states of Nuevo León and Coahuila. And it is preparing for further exploration in the southeastern state of Veracruz, at a cost of 245 million dollars over the space of 18 months, in conjunction with the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP), a state institution. …

“In a 2011 report, ‘World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States,’ the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) assessed 48 shale gas basins in 32 countries, including Mexico, and estimated that there were 6,622 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the United States and the other 32 countries studied. … For Mexico, it calculated 681 TCF — the fourth largest reserves in the world. ….

“The National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), in charge of technical permits for PEMEX projects, will analyse and approve regulations for fracking this year.

“Mexico’s oil giant plans to drill 20 wells by 2016, with a total investment of over two billion dollars. It projects operating 6,500 commercial wells over the next 50 years.”

Will CA media heed green or The New York Times? Character test time

Quite the contrast. Mexico will “analyze and approve” fracking regulations this year. In California, the Legislature will just ignore fracking’s long history and what the rest of the world is doing and ban it. And the state’s media and its corrupt environmental reporters will never point out this long history or what the New York Times — THE NEW YORK TIMES — says about the brown energy revolution.

Sheesh.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

No. 6: Canada

No. 7: Argentina

By Chris Reed

The “brown energy” revolution is under way and nothing is going to prevent it from transforming world energy markets — especially not childish denial and petulance by California greens. Fossil fuels will be the dominant source of energy around the planet for decades to come, and while renewable sources of energy will be part of the picture, even The New York Times regularly acknowledges the folly and stupidity of “peak oil” rhetoric — at least implicitly — with articles such as this April 24 piece.

Yet in California, this big-picture perspective is almost completely missing. Incredibly enough, the first coverage of the committee-level approval in the state Legislature of measures blocking hydraulic fracturing did not note that the Obama administration considers fracking just another heavy industry, not the devil incarnate.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 7: Argentina

But this is the norm. And this is why that starting last Saturday, every morning I’ve been blogging about the nations around the world that are embracing hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as a way to create jobs and wealth and on economic competitiveness grounds. Shockingly enough, they think that it’s a good thing to have cheap energy. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Canada. Today it’s the turn of Argentina, the eighth-largest nation by land mass in the world. As I have written on several occasions, the point of this series of blog posts is that the fracking/brown energy revolution is coming, regardless of what greens in the Golden State want, and that California can either join in the party or get left behind.

This is from an NPR report last year:

“As the wind whips across the scrub grass in southern Argentina, a crane unloads huge bags of artificial sand for oil workers preparing for the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of a well.

“Water mixed with chemicals and tiny ceramic beads are then blasted underground at high pressure. This mixture helps create fissures, allowing oil and natural gas to flow.

“Energy analysts believe there are billions of barrels of oil and gas buried in a desert-like patch in Patagonia.”

This is from UPI last month:

By Chris Reed

Hydraulic fracturing has been around for decades in our northern neighbor, just as it has been in the U.S. And what do you know? Canadian enviros only began complaining about fracking in recent years when its new IT-driven efficiency suddenly made it a threat to their push for a dreamy pure green energy future — just like with the enviros in the United States. Oh, what a strange coincidence.

Alas, the Legislature has taken initial steps to block fracking in California. On Monday, AB 1301 and two other anti-fracking bills passed the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. Lawmakers simply don’t care that the Obama administration sees fracking as just another heavy industry.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 6: Canada

This indifference to reason is why starting last Saturday, every morning I’ve been blogging about the nations around the world that are embracing fracking. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. Today it’s Canada’s turn.

My point: The fracking/brown energy revolution is coming, regardless of what greens in the newsrooms of the L.A. Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee want, and that California can either join in the party or get left behind. This is from the Montreal Gazette:

“As Canadians expect a transition to a less carbon-intensive energy future, partnering becomes an essential piece of the renewable picture.

“Natural gas is the cleanest-burning hydrocarbons, making it an ideal partner to intermittent renewable options. It offers a reliable energy source during periods when intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, are unable to provide adequate capacity, and it can be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a variety of ways, including transportation and electricity generation. …

“Canada is the world’s third-largest producer of natural gas, and natural gas provides almost one-third of the energy used by Canadians. …

“Natural gas trapped in unconventional formations is typically located two to three kilometres below the Earth’s surface and thousands of metres below drinking water aquifers. Drinking water aquifers are typically found less than 300 metres below the surface.

“Available technologies, including hydraulic fracturing, are continually adapted to safely and economically produce natural gas from these challenging geological formations. … Over the course of the past 60-years-plus, more than 175,000 wells have been hydraulically fractured in Canada, including in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Quebec and New Brunswick.  ‘About 85% of current oil and gas activity in British Columbia, and 70% in Alberta, involves hydraulic fracturing. It is a common practice in the industry,’ Mr. Heffernan says.”

Fracking is evil! Proof? Picky, picky, picky!

And what is the Canadian consensus? That it’s just another manageable heavy industry, not the devil — the same conclusion as the Obama administration.

“The Canadian natural gas industry is one of the most regulated in the world. In addition to regulations specific to individual provinces, all have laws to minimize impact, protect freshwater aquifers and ensure responsible development.”

But none of this seemingly matters to Democrats in the Legislature. Fracking is new (no), a huge threat to groundwater (no), a huge causer of dangerous earthquakes (no).

If only the media addressed and then debunked these claims with one-millionth the effort they do with factually challenged claims on most high-profile issues.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

No. 5: Brazil

By Chris Reed

The passage of anti-fracking legislation by an Assembly committee Monday could lead to a showdown between green Dem lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown, who’s struck a measured tone so far on hyrdaulic fracturing, the radically improved energy extraction technology that’s touched off an economic boom in the Dakotas, Montana, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But what’s really needed is a showdown between the U.S. environmental movement and reality. Fracking is not new. It occurs thousands of feet below the groundwater table and the Obama administration has concluded it’s just another heavy industry, not the devil. And if California doesn’t exploit its huge energy reserves, that won’t stop the rest of the world from joining the brown energy revolution, leaving the Golden State at a huge competitive disadvantage and killing manufacturing as a noticeable source of jobs.

Fracking sanity chapter No. 5: Brazil

This is why that starting last Saturday, every morning I’ve been blogging about the nations around the world that are embracing fracking. So far I’ve covered Germany, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Today I’m writing about Brazil, which is on track to be an economic superpower in coming decades because of its immense natural resources. My point: The fracking/brown energy revolution is coming, regardless of what greens in Brentwood, Santa Barbara and San Francisco think, and that California can either join in the party or get left behind.

“From the shale underlying Western Pennsylvania to the deep-sea oil off the coast of Brazil, emerging energy sources have policymakers and entrepreneurs from both hemispheres talking business. … oil fields off the coast here — and shale formations in the country’s south — have Brazilian companies keen on drilling, and Pennsylvania’s experiences exploring and extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale have been a central point of discussion since a trade delegation began meetings in Sao Paulo this week.

“‘They have a very similar balance of energy portfolio,’ [Pennsylvania] Gov. Tom Corbett said in an interview. … On a one-day visit here Wednesday, Mr. Corbett met with Sergio Cabral, governor of Rio de Janeiro state, in his office at the Palacio Guanabara, the seat of state government. In addition to discussing conditions for business and systems of education in their states, Mr. Corbett said, the governors signed an agreement to collaborate, particularly on issues related to oil and natural gas. … ‘He’s very interested in the shale gas because they do have shale gas.’

“Mr. Corbett said he discussed a similar agreement during an earlier meeting with the vice governor of Sao Paulo. …

“Braskem America has five U.S. plants, a research and development center in Pittsburgh and last year acquired a portion of the Sunoco refinery at Marcus Hook, outside of Philadelphia. …”

“‘We are all aware of the shale gas revolution in the United States since the start of this century,’ said Carlos Mariani, vice president of the Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro.”

Who bragged about gains from U.S. fracking? His initials are BHO

That’s from an April 12 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story. Thirty-one fracking companies, many from the U.S., have set up shop in Brazil. That reflects an important point that doesn’t get brought up much. America’s fracking expertise means the rest of the world will have to rely on our firms for years to come — another direct boon for our economy besides the cheap energy resulting from fracking on U.S. land.

And I would like to once again point out that the White House is OK with fracking. Who bragged about the U.S. becoming the “Saudi Arabia of natural gas” — thanks entirely to fracking — on the campaign trail?

A fellow named Barack Obama. Here’s the video clip for green propagandists. Not that it will stop them.

Greenpeace hinted at the truth in a 2012 policy statement.

“Greenpeace opposes fracking because it diverts from real solutions (including energy efficiency and renewables), and the full effects on the environment and health has not been fully investigated or addressed.”

Reason no. 1 is what drives the myths. The greens were so close to having their worldview be the only accepted alternative going forward on energy issues. Then fracking changed the world.

Fracking watch: Previous posts

No. 1: Germany

No. 2: China

No. 3: Russia

No. 4: Saudi Arabia

By CHRISS STREET

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ Brundtland Report. It defined Sustainable Development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

But aristocratic socialists have corrupted the sustainable development movement into a vehicle to achieve vast administrative power for themselves.  California’s AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, sold as a way to achieve Sustainable Development, will fail at meeting the needs of the present generation and debt accumulation will consign future generations to a life as debt slaves.

Through the early 1980s, Latin American socialist economies powered growth by quadrupling their indebtedness from $75 billion to $315 billion.  Aristocrats controlling these governments, while the poor had no voice in these loan matters. Nor did the poor benefit from them as most of the loan proceeds were siphoned off to benefit the aristocrats and their crony amigos.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the U.S. economy had suffered a decade of stagflation (stagnation plus inflation), turning our Midwest manufacturing base into the Rust Belt.  Reagan was determined to regain international economic dominance by reasserting our Founding Fathers’ demand for limited government and maximum personal liberty.  Reagan viscerally believed what John Adams wrote, “The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

Reagan’s relentless focus overcame the bipartisan drumbeat to continue the socialist expansion of the money supply to promote growth.  He then leveraged monetary restraint with the largest income tax cut in American history to power the American economy to sustained growth with low inflation.

The inflated prices of raw material exports that Latin American socialists relied upon to pay their inflated debts plunged by 40 percent.  Mexico, Brazil and Argentina became insolvent, as per capita GDP fell by 9 percent between 1980 and 1985 and 50 percent of their people fell into poverty.

Austerity

In desperation, Latin nations turned to the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund as lender-of-last-resort.  But IMF support came with mandatory demands for austerity budget cuts, public industry privatizations and the elimination of trade barriers to shrink socialist power.  By 1987, the capitalist U.S. economy was the world’s growth engine and a tidal wave of foreign investment was pouring into capitalist-friendly Latin economies.  World socialism was in a shambles as the Soviet Union disintegrated and China embraced the market economy.  The release of the Brundtland Report was seen as recognition of the burgeoning capitalist globalized economy.

By 1992, memories of the pain of the Latin American Debt Crisis were fading.  Aristocrats repackaged socialist plans to again usurp economic power into Agenda 21 and introduced this socialist manifesto at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Agenda 21 envisioned bestowing the UN, government bureaucracies and major interest groups the power to suspend the rights of property under law regarding all global, national and local human economic and social interaction that might affect the environment.  Agenda 21’s four main pillars of action were:

1. Combating poverty, promoting health, making consumption sustainable;

2. Assuring atmospheric protection, protecting fragile environments, conserving biodiversity, preventing pollution and regulating biotechnology;

3. Strengthening the roles of children, youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, workers and indigenous peoples;

4. Through science, technology transfer, education, international financial mechanisms.

The End of Democracy

California’s aristocratic socialists embedded Agenda 21 into AB32. The law supposedly was designed to fight man-made climate change by establishing a comprehensive program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sources throughout the state.  But its real goal was bestow on California’s aristocratic socialists control of the California economy free from the burden of voter input.

This new financial clout comes at a favorable time, given California’s socialist politicians have run up the largest state debt in the country at $265 billion, the largest unfunded pension liability at United States at approximately $568 billion, and a current general-fund budget deficit of $9 billion.

There is no Reaganesque figure in California able to battle the state’s entrenched socialists into supporting limited government and maximum personal liberty.  According to a 2009 study, the economic impact of AB 32’s cap-and-trade and regulatory features will be like an economic tax of destroyed.

California’s aristocratic socialists control the AB 32 bureaucracies. Poor taxpayers have no voice in AB 32’s decision makings, nor will they benefit from what is increasingly seen as junk science. There are plenty of new resources to sustain aristocrats and their crony amigos.

Feel free to forward this Op Ed and or follow our Blog at www.chrissstreetandcompany.com. Thank you also for the success of Chriss Street’s latest book, “The Third Way,” available in hard copy or for Kindle at: www.amazon.com.